Alicia’s boss has always liked her. Matt expressed his interest more than once, and he didn’t stop even after she was married to James, who also happen to work in the same office. Alicia kept this a secret and kept her distance whenever she could for obvious reasons. During a retrenchment exercise, James was let go. With her husband no longer around, Matt decides to go for it , pressuring Alicia until she gave in.

I stared at the email on my screen for so long, i might as well save it as my wallpaper.

It’s coming to 9pm, and i read it for the 3rd time.

The first time was fast, the way you read anything from HR.

I had to squeeze my bladder and hold my pee as i read through the list, scanning for my own name, my own department.

The second time i read it slower, because I found names I recognised. Colleagues, work buddies, a senior.

The third time because one of those names was James.

Alicia : fuck…

I looked up from my desk in the middle of Tanjong Pagar.

Around me, the office empties in the way it always does on a Tuesday evening, cardigans pulled from the backs of chairs, monitors going dark one by one.

My eyes keep drifting back to the list and i kept referencing the heading.

Positions identified for potential redundancy — effective immediately.

Fourteen names. James Tan Wei Ming is the ninth.

I close the email. Open it again. As if the letters might rearrange themselves into something I can bring home without ruining the night or the next six months of our lives.

Alicia : fuck…oh fuck…

I cursed and buried my face in my palms before standing up from my cubicle to look at the spot where James sits. He has left the office already, meeting uni friends for drinks.

Five years married. We joined the company within a year of each other, me first, then James. I remember celebrating with chilli crab at Mellben, both of us still young enough to think two incomes meant safety. We bought the Punggol BTO the year after. Three-room, fourteenth floor, the one with the kitchen facing the water that James wanted because he said he’d cook more.

James : cook while facing the water, got more of a celebrity chef vibe…

He cooked more for only four months. We took a car loan on a 198k Honda that we probably shouldn’t have committed to but the showroom was air-conditioned and the salesman was persuasive, and James kept saying, can, can, our combined salary can cover. Combined.

Now I sit here and do the arithmetic that spouses do when only one of them knows the axe is coming. Mortgage: $3,200. Car loan: $1480. Insurance, his and mine, the joint one, $640. Both sets of parents’ allowance, because we are good children, unlike some char siew kids.

Utilities, groceries, the phone bills, the parking at Waterway Point. It adds up the way it always does.

Alicia : fuck…

I lost count of how many times i cursed at my desk that evening.

James is probably finishing his 2nd pint of Erdinger with his friends. He doesn’t know yet, if he did, my phone would have rang.

He has no fucking idea that a committee of people he’s never met sat in a room today and subtracted him from the company’s future.

I should call him. I should go home and sit across from him and say it plainly,

Alicia : Dear…they’re cutting your role…but it’s ok. we can figure this out…

or maybe i should just scream it in his face.

Alicia : We’re fucked, hong gan already, retrenched when you are barely 30. AHHHHHHH!

After i’m done screaming, then we can figure it out together.

That’s what a wife does isn’t it. That’s the standard script.

But I don’t reach for my phone. Not yet.

Instead I type a message.

Alicia msg : dear… Something happened at work today. Can we talk when I get home?

I read it back. Too ominous. It sounded like someone forced himself on me or something. He’ll spend the next hour in panic mode, and he’ll arrive at the wrong catastrophe, and I’ll have to undo that before I deliver the real one. I deleted it.

Alicia msg : Hey, heading home soon. How’s your evening?

Too casual, i deleted it again. It sounded like i’m some secret admirer, where got husband and wife text like that one?

Some thing you can’t say through a screen. You need a face for this, my face.

This is the problem, i don’t think my ‘resting bitch’ face is appropriate for breaking any kind of news. I look like a grumpy witch when i don’t smile. Sometimes when i’m deep in thought and zoning out, i look like some angry Ah lian in Yishun trying to suss out who i can pick on.

I notice Matt’s office light is still on. His door is open, some management book’s advice about accessibility and shit. Woke stuff that even young gen Z like me don’t understand the point of.

Do for show only.

I can see him through the glass partition, leaned back in his chair, one hand on his mouse, reading something on his screen with.

He looks up. Catches me looking and smiles.

I look away.

I quickly busy myself with shutting down my laptop, unplugging the charger, performing the small rituals of leaving.

I pack my bag. Sling it over my shoulder. Walk toward the lifts. The carpet absorbs the click of my heels. I pass the pantry, the meeting rooms with their whiteboards still covered in this morning’s strategy session.

I pass Matt’s office. I am going to keep walking. I am going to press the lift button and go down to the lobby and take the MRT home and sit across from my husband and tell him.

Matt : Alicia…

I stop.

Matt : Got a minute?

His voice is low and calm. Matt doesn’t rush. He has the kind of confidence that can afford patience. I hesitate at his doorway. My bag strap digs into my shoulder.

I want to leave, but when your boss ask if you have a minute, especially after HR sends out that email, anyone with common sense knew what the right move was.

I went in.

He gestures at the chair across from his desk. I sit.

He leans forward, elbows on the table, like the way a doctor looks before giving you results. Like he wants to tell me i got cancer or something.

Matt : You’ve seen the email?

I nodded.

Matt : here’s the thing…there are…more cuts are coming. Q2, maybe sooner. I wanted you to know…

He pauses. Holds my gaze. I held his too, i’m also holding a lot more, my breath, my bladder, in fact i’m squeezing everything so hard i thought my pee will come out my nostril.

Matt : Your position is safe. I made sure of it…

I should feel relieved. I do feel relieved. I also feel something else.

A small, cold weight settling somewhere below my ribs, in the space where instinct lives.

Alicia : Th..thank you…

Matt : Go home, Alicia. Get some rest…

I walk to the lift. Press G. The doors close and the silence is total.

My reflection stares back at me from the brushed steel, distorted and pale.

He made sure of it.

Unless you’re a block of wood, you should know favors from a man, to a woman, comes with a cost.

Doesn’t fucking matter if that woman is married.

There is always a cost.

I just don’t know what that costs yet.

coming soon